Martin Johnson column – There are some guys who just thrive off being bad

A nicer man than Vic Marks would be hard to find, and the dialogue as he walked out to bat for Somerset against Hampshire one day in the Seventies had a familiar feel to it.

“Afternoon Vic, lovely day.”

“I’ll say it is …”

“How’s things?”

“Good thanks.. two legs please ump.”

“Certainly Victor, right arm over five to come….”

Shortly after which something hard and red fizzes past his cap at something in excess of 90mph, and before the wicketkeeper tosses it to the fielder at first slip he notices a couple of nasal hairs adhering to the shiny side.

“Bloomin’ heck Vic, what have you done to upset Malcolm?” inquired the keeper, but Marks had no idea why Marshall was glaring back down the pitch at him, nor why the hairs from the nostril were quickly joined by a couple from the eyebrows.

It turned out that the late West Indian fast bowler had for some reason taken a serious dislike to the way Marks walked, and the mere act of watching him come into bat had much the same effect as that test tube on Dr Jekyll. A discovery which prompted Vic to strap on some extra padding for Hampshire games, and quite possibly practise walking up and down in front of his hotel bedroom mirror.

It happens with spectators as well. You’ll be sitting there in your deckchair, or in front of the lounge TV, and for reasons you can’t quite readily understand you find that the bloke running into bowl is giving you the pip.

An acquaintance of mine used to get irrationally worked up about Dominic Cork – “the bloke’s got a permanent sneer on his face, and it drives me mad,” he’d say, and another chum had to fight off a strong urge to throw cushions at the set when Peter Siddle was bowling for Australia. He swore blind that even the cat used to arch its back and hiss when Siddle appeared on screen.

As is often the way, Siddle is reputed to be a very nice chap off the field, and despite the fact that Michael Atherton had many a verbal joust with Merv Hughes, the former England captain had no problems at close of play, going so far as to describe him as “affable”.

You would, though, have been hard pressed to extract a similar verdict from Graeme Hick, who, like many of us, found it difficult to detect a single redeeming factor in a Village People lookalike who swung it both ways (his stomach, that is), minced to the crease like someone wearing a panty girdle, and from the bowels of the small koala bear he kept just beneath his nose, regular bursts of witty repartee would pour forth (Eg: “Eff off yer Pommy bastard, the pavilion’s that way!”).

Hick copped it every time from Hughes, and was too nice, and indeed shy a man, to fire a few broadsides back. In fact, in the list of Australian cricketers who I’ve taken a fairly strong dislike to down the years, I’d certainly have Hughes up near the top, albeit not quite as high as Matthew Hayden.

Hayden’s sledging was vulgar enough to make Hughes sound like Australia’s answer to Sir John Betjeman, although here again was a man who apparently only sprouted a second head when he pulled on his cricket gear. Otherwise, he was a religious, church-going bloke who wore a kitchen pinny and wrote cookery books.

When I was covering Leicestershire for the local evening paper many years ago, a national newspaper reporter often assigned to Grace Road had a particular dislike of one of the home bowlers, Gordon Parsons. In particular, the way Gordon appealed for a wicket, which involved running backwards down the pitch with both hands in the air, emitting banshee howls in the umpire’s direction, and only stopping if the finger went up. Otherwise, he’d carry on travelling backwards, all the way through the slip cordon, past the nets, into the public park.

I, on the other hand, found Gordon’s antics rather endearing. His only fault was in believing that he was a cross between Trueman and Tyson, whereas it was just his run-up that was fast, rather than his bowling. The sight of Viv Richards would immediately prompt a bouncer, and on one occasion, Dickie Bird signalled to Viv that Gordon had had his “one for the over”. Viv, who had just despatched Gordon’s “one for the over” into another postcode, protested. “No, no, Dickie. Let him have as many as he wants.”

It will come as no surprise to know that while Kevin Pietersen had plenty of admirers in the Press box (even though he was perfectly capable of providing that service for himself) this had more to do with his cricketing ability than the modesty of his demeanour. Pietersen had special gifts in many areas, but never more so than the art of getting himself into someone else’s picture, or a team-mate’s big television moment.

Michael Vaughan once joked, after his attempt to raise his bat for a century was severely hampered by KP jumping on him and smothering him with kisses, “for a moment I wasn’t sure whether I’d scored a hundred, or he had”.

And now we come to the cricketer who’s got up more people’s noses than any other in history. Whenever there’s been trouble involving Pakistan, you can normally bet that Javed Miandad was involved in some capacity – and when it wasn’t actually him getting involved in on-field bust-ups with the likes of Dennis Lillee and Ian Botham, he was stirring it behind the scenes as well, such as persuading Shakoor Rana to go on strike in Faisalabad after the row with Mike Gatting.

However, there was one tour to Pakistan when an England journalist invited to a party brought along an expensive bottle of black market Scotch, and when his grateful host opened and sniffed it, the journo said proudly: “What do you think. Single malt?”

“Er, no,” came the reply. “Closer to PG Tips I’d say.”

It’s an old trick in Pakistan. The seal remains intact, but the whisky is syringed out of the bottom of the bottle, replaced with cold tea, and re-sealed. Ditto gin and water. So when Javed offered to supply the grog for the end-of-tour Press party, I was appointed to sample each of the dozen bottles he’d provided to test their authenticity.

“I can shay,” I announced before slowly sinking onto the bed, “that all theesh bottlsh are absholutely shpiffing.” So take my word for it. Top bloke that Javed.

This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday June 10 2016

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